Abū Hayyān al-Tawhīdī: Beyond the Dual Opposition of Verse and Prose in the Islamic Literary-Rhetorical Tradition

Verse and prose have had proponents and opponents in the literary tradition throughout history, and each group has argued for or against the other. By overcoming this dual opposition without taking the side of poetry or prose and adopting a philosophical and aesthetic approach, Abū Hayyān al-Tawhīdī revealed other aspects of the relationship between verse and prose. Quoting the opinions of the advocates of poetry and prose, the present paper objectively analyzes the monotheistic meta-dualism approach in Al-Imtāʿ wa al-Mu’ānasa using a descriptive-analytical method. The results indicate that by rereading the works of the proponents of verse and prose, Tawhīdī believes that the final word cannot be stated about poetry and prose. Moreover, after explaining the nature of speech and its types, he mentions the advantages of verse and prose in the words of their advocates: e.g., verse is creation and the general public does not attain it, while prose is realized faster and attracts the general writer for its convenience; prose needs poetry for adornment, but poetry does not need prose; the poet has an infinite horizon ahead while the writer has a limited field, and prose is the foundation of speech but poetry is its derivative; prose is free of obligations while poetry is full of poetic requirements; prose borrows from wisdom but poetry borrows from emotion; and despite the formal beauty of verse, prose is more original and noble. Finally, he concludes that both verse and prose have undeniable virtues and the best type of speech is one that its form is something between verse and prose while it is neither verse nor prose.